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feel at home here

Dear friends,

Welcome to NOVA VIII: chicago seasons Constellation’s celebration of new music , shared voices, and the city we call home

Each year, our NOVA series (New Original Vocal Ar t ) invites composers to create new works for tenor and bass voices that respond to a central theme In honor of our NOVA VIII, we asked eight composers to reflect on the passing of time , the changing of seasons, and the cycles that shape life in Chicago The result is eight world premieres each one an offering rooted in a unique ar tistic voice and a shared reverence for this city’s character, complexity, and resilience

Chicago has always been a place of contradiction: wild and orderly, brutal and beautiful, concrete and green Its people diverse , passionate , gritty, joyful move through seasons that test and transform us Through these commissioned works, we honor the way nature and community coexist here: in the first bloom of a neighborhood garden, the loneliness of winter’s hush, the hum of cicadas in a heatwave , and the quiet hope of spring thaw

This program also marks the close of Constellation’s 11th season another year of making space for new stories, new voices, and new conversations From our stint on Broadway with GleePub in October, the work with Strong Voices for our educational engagement in Chicago Public Schools, our Sola Fide concer ts in Februar y, to this final performance in June , we ’ ve premiered bold new music , collaborated with incredible community par tners, and continued to grow the circle of ar tists and listeners that define our ensemble

As we close out our 11th season, we ’ re also preparing for an exciting new chapter. Later this year, Constellation will welcome a new executive director someone who will carr y forward this mission of curiosity, collaboration, and community building. It has been one of the great honors of my life to help shape this ensemble alongside the incredible ar tists, composers, and suppor ters who make this work possible .

To those who have cheered us on from the beginning and to those just discovering our music: thank you Your presence , your generosity, and your belief in the value of new ar t have sustained us We don’t take that for granted

With gratitude and admiration,

Ryan Townsend Strand Executive Director & Tenor, Constellation

TEXTS AND NOTES

WORLD’S FAIR

World's Fair

arrival: slow lap of springtide, welcome lion throngs whiz tall and tall

II.

son, raise your shop's gate lights ridge in aisles green glass heat hug glows dull til close

III. city of loose earth death smirks, composts time, an elm grows and then descends

IV. in windows gold seals grey sky heartbeat quieting the train back to you

BESET from Leaves in Windy Weather, 1929

I am a fire, beating in a storm, Turning and twisting to keep me warm.

The wind blows and scatters me, The rain comes and batters me, The hail falls and shatters me.

But still I burn. And I turn

This way and that way. I flicker and strive; I eat my own heart but I keep alive.

Text by Eunice Tietjens (1884—1944)

BESET

SITUACIÓN

Situación #5 is inspired by a quiet winter afternoon at the Montrose Bird Sanctuary, sitting by the lake. As I watched the water shift in color-reflecting the changing angles of sunlight, then fading into dusk—I felt time compress. This piece captures that experience in miniature: gradual timbral shifts and an expanding harmonic field mirror the slow movement of waves and light.

Carlos Zárate

LONE AND LIVELY: TWO CHICAGO LYRICS

Desolate and Lone

Desolate and lone

All night long on the lake

Where fog trails and mist creeps, The whistle of a boat

Calls and cries unendingly, Like some lost child

In tears and trouble

Hunting the harbor's breast And the harbor's eyes.

Fling Your Red Scarf

Fling your red scarf faster and faster, dancer. It is summer and the sun loves a million green leaves, masses of green. Your red scarf flashes across them calling and a-calling. The silk and flare of it is a great soprano leading a chorus Carried along in a rouse of voices reaching for the heart of the world. Your toes are singing to meet the song of your arms: Let the red scarf go swifter. Summer and the sun command you.

“Lost” and “Mask” by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) from Chicago Poems, 1916

SLOPES SHRINKING, GLAZED, GRAYED

When tasked with composing a work based on Chicago's seasons, I immediately gravitated toward the concept of the slow thaw. In my first year of living in Chicago, I was so struck by the incredibly slow emergence of new growth after winter. It was such a stark contrast to anywhere I had lived before. Tiny buds emerging day by day in the still cold air, green shoots appearing at the ends of dead branches, the first hints of flowers poking through brown, sometimes frost-covered, grass. A very non-linear process, warm temperatures can always give way to snow and wind, and it makes the fragility of tiny new growth all the more special. I absolutely love the time of year in Chicago when the first hints of life and hope emerge from the long winter, and I absolutely love how long it takes to transform from winter into spring. This piece is a reflection on and celebration of savoring the slow thaw.

Megan DiGeorgio

FALSE SPRING ON LAKE MICHIGAN

On the first warm spring day, after the long, dark waiting— day of earth waking and stretching, day of birdsong greeting the year’s morning day of sunrise like a sliced blood orange over the lake, topaz-crusted— like a vapor emitted from the thaw, comes the shocking NOW, and enchantment towards legendary feelings, a romance of tiny perfections, like a Brigadoon-day, though at work, it’s only Thursday, and a deadline, too. Magic in spite of next week, which will freeze again.

A sudden memory of autumn surprises, her mornings of prescience, of silence, of blood orange and topaz-crusted trees, of river stillness, a sign of the earth’s yielding, at the same time so abstract and specific, something humble and magnificent enough that it also forged a way between the earth-writ human life and legend, star-scribbled. Some fragments are legible even in the city sky.

Text by Gregory Peebles

PURPLE MARTINS

If we were such and so, the same as these, maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, tumbling half over in the water mirrors, tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, tumbling our purple numbers.

Twirl on, you and your satin blue. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple tumblers you are.

Dip and get away From loops into slip-knots, Write your own ciphers and figure eights. It is your wooded island here in Lincoln park. Everybody knows this belongs to you.

Five fat geese

Eat grass on a sod bank

And never count your slinging ciphers, your sliding figure eights.

A man on a green paint iron bench, Slouches his feet and sniffs in a book, And looks at you and your loops and slip-knots, And looks at you and your sheaths of satin blue, And slouches again and sniffs in the book, And mumbles: It is an idle and a doctrinaire exploit. Go on tumbling half over in the water mirrors. Go on tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple tumblers you are.

Text by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) from Smoke and Steel

AT HOME HERE

I could feel at home. Dad arrives in time for a sunrise departure: a tearful goodbye to home. Anxiety turns anticipation as city enters skyline. All things go, all things go.

August 18*; Chicago, Illinois: I could feel at home here. low of 68, high of 86; Unpacking the U-Haul, a clear and sunny day with a gentle breeze. barely notice the heat. Gianna grabs Nhu Lan while we prepare the tabula rasa. Lemongrass, cilantro, cucumber, jalapeño, Roscoe's, Art Walk, "working" at Emerald City, choirs of cicadas; and it was very good.

Number 568: West Ridge Nature Park. October 20th: 21 acres at the corner of Rosehill Cemetery. low of 51, high of 78; a clear and sunny day with a gentle breeze. Native trees and shrubs garland the trails Surrounding the perimeter of the pond. River Park, at the convergence of the Chicago River and Canal, / Eugene Field contains 8.5 acres of native praine, savanna, A friend visits; is the largest established by its district. / wet prairie, and wetland habitats with a wide range of wildflowers. I take them to Cloud Gate while mourning lost time. The sculpture weighs in at My sisters visit, so 110 tons, we go out on Ash Wednesday 33 feet high,

and worship at Cloud Gate. 42 feet wide, and 66 feet long.

I might feel at Walk the lake. Forever explore. Hear sounds of drums at the AIC; choirs of cicadas. Dance in the rain, in a bar in a club. Kiss under heat lamps. Your garden grows in the light of the Bean, under CTA heat lamps, while riding the Brown/Red Line, on the Blue and the Green Line, and Purple, and Orange / on the Pink Line— Your garden grows. Your garden grows in the light of the city, in sun and snow.

Look up and out to the city.

March 16*; Chicago, Illinois: Feel cold and wet, low of 30, high 44. and feel at home here.

Text written and compiled by Jadie

Reeves

2025 NOVA COMPOSERS

The music of award-winning composer GREG BARTHOLOMEW is frequently performed across North America and in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. NPR classical music reviewer Tom Manoff called Bartholomew “a fine composer not afraid of accessibility.”

Winner of the 2013 Cheryl A. Spector Prize (for Summer Suite), the 2012 Spector Prize (for the First Suite from Razumov), the Silver Platter Repertoire Award (for The Tree), and First Place in the 2006 Orpheus Music Composition Competition (for Beneath the Apple Tree), Bartholomew was also awarded the Masterworks Prize from ERM Media in 2005 and 2006. A two-time Finalist for the American Prize in Choral Composition (2012 and 2013), Bartholomew was the 2012/2013 Composer in Residence for the Cascadian Chorale.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1957, Bartholomew studied trombone at John Muir Elementary School and piano at Cornish College of the Arts before earning degrees from the College of William & Mary in Virginia and the University of Washington. He later sang with Seattle Pro Musica for more than fifteen

years, and studied violin with Teo Benson. He currently studies trumpet with Judson Scott.

Commercial recordings of his works are available by the Czech Philharmonic, the Kiev Philharmonic, the Esoterics, Connecticut Choral Artists, the Ars Brunensis Chorus, the Langroise Trio, trumpeter James Ackley, and cellists Suzanne Mueller and Ovidiu Marinescu. Sheet music is available from ART OF SOUND MUSIC, ARS NOVA PRESS, IMAGINE MUSIC, ORPHEUS MUSIC and BURKE & BAGLEY gregbartholomew.com

Composer RICH CAMPBELL’s awards include three resident fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His works have been performed by the Australian Boys Choir, VocalEssence, SACRA/ PROFANA, Chorosynthesis, Octarium, The Young People’s Chorus of New York, The Manhattan Choral Ensemble, Polyhymnia, Musica Intima, South Bend Chamber Singers, Pacific Edge Voices, Pacific Women’s Chorus, Harrisburg Gay Men’s Chorus, San Francisco Bay Area Chamber Choir, Chester River Chorale, Wasatch Chorale Ars Nova, Village Singers of Westchester, Glass Menagerie Chorus, College of St. Rose, San Francisco State, Georgia College, University of Northern Iowa, University of Rhode Island, Dordt College, Florida State, Jacksonville University, Purdue University-Fort Wayne, Mt. Holyoke College, St. Andrew’s College, MIT, Voices Boston, Cantabile Youth Singers, OAKE National Honors Choir, Idaho All State, Arkansas All State, York County Honors Choir, Mennonite Youth Choir, Uncommon Music Festival, Philadelphia Center City Opera Theatre, Brass Initiative, C Street Brass and ensembles at Indiana State’s Contemporary Music Festival and the Southern ACDA Conference. He has appeared playing his compositions on film and television, including SMASH and The Devil’s Advocate. His theatrical collaboration Puppy Love was staged at NY’s PS 122. He is the co-writer of songs on a Grammy nominated album by The Triplets and an alumnus of the Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam, where he studied composition with Robert Washburn and piano with James Ball. He lives in NYC and has run 28 marathons. campbellsongs.com

ED FRAZIER DAVIS (b. 1989) is an English-American composer, baritone, conductor, and "musical alchemist" (KC Independent), living and working in Chicago. He is the founder and artistic director of Vox Venti, a semi-professional chorus which focuses largely on works by living composers and is proudly dedicated to commissioning new works from LGBTQ+ composers, women composers, and composers of color on every concert.

Described as "at once deeply emotional and sublime" (KC Arts Beat) and lauded for its "compelling, […] colourful orchestration" (Musical Toronto), Ed's music is polystylistic and draws from many eclectic influences, from Renaissance madrigals and Anglican church music to postminimalism and video game music. He has composed for a wide variety of media, but as an experienced singer he has a particularly strong

affinity for writing for choirs. His compositions have been commissioned and performed throughout the world by many renowned performers and organizations, including Access Contemporary Music, the ACDA National Convention, the Aspen Music Festival, the BBC Singers, The Crossing, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, PLEXUS, and the Toronto Children's Chorus. He has been named a winner or finalist in numerous contests, including the American Prize in Choral Composition, Chanticleer's Student Composer Competition, the Illinois-ACDA Composer Award, the Missouri Composer's Project, and the Young New Yorkers' Chorus's Composition Competition Ultimately, he seeks to write music that breaks established artistic binaries e.g. traditional vs. modern, accessible vs. unfamiliar to create art that is fulfilling to as wide an audience as possible.

Ed has studied composition at Knox College, the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, primarily with Marta Ptaszyńska, Kyong Mee Choi, Stacy Garrop, Chen Yi, James Mobberley, and Zhou Long. efdav is.com

MEGAN DI GEORGIO is a composer, violist, vocalist, educator, and arts administrator based in Chicago. As an artist, Megan believes in community and collaboration, and works to create accessible, inclusive artistic spaces and opportunities. She strives for active integration of her various artistic pursuits into one comprehensive creative practice. Her work is featured on Duo Entre-Nous’s latest album, Progress. Select commissions include Duo Entre-Nous, Concertia, University of Maine Farmington, Edgewood High School, Fear No Music, Natalie Groom/Catherine Robinson/Qun Ren, Bryan Young, and Joanna McCoskey Wiltshire; upcoming/recent performances of her music include New Music Chicago Presents, LunART Festival, SHE: Festival of Women in Music, Constellation Chicago’s Frequency Series, Chicago songSLAM, “Flexing the Canon,” and Boulanger Initiative’s WoCo Fest. Additional notable performances include the International Contemporary Ensemble, TURN UP Multimedia Festival, Syracuse University Singers, Hypercube, ClarinetFest, TURNmusic, Fear No Music’s HEARINGS, Susquehanna Symphony Orchestra, Pennsbury Community Band, District New Music Coalition’s New Music DC Conference, and Megan’s self-produced composer-performer show, Equilibrium. She has been selected for opportunities such as Quince Ensemble’s Quincetitute, the Out of Our Shells project, facilitated by American University’s Humanities Truck, and Concertia’s Emerging Composer Fellowship for 2021-2022. Megan is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition and technology at Northwestern University megandigeorgio.com

"Full of charm and shapely allure" (Opera News) and " a tapestry of immense grace" (Textura) are some of the praise for music of CHRISTOPHER J. HOH. He composes for voices and instruments, separately and combined, in a modern classical vein. Performers have presented his music in Europe and Latin America and throughout the USA and Canada. Grammy-winning ensemble The Crossing, as well as Vox Futura and others, have recorded his work on twelve commercial albums as of 2024. This

discography includes a video release of his first string quartet played by the Benda Quartet in an old Czech factory. His vocal music sets compelling texts, while all his work contains intriguing harmony and engaging counterpoint. Project:Encore has endorsed fourteen of his works to date for excellent use of choral forces and exceptional programability. Worldwide radio airplay includes the syndicated Pipedreams, broadcasting Concertino Corona for organ and chamber orchestra.

The professional vocal ensemble The Thirteen premiered Chris’ Musica Dei Donum for 12 voices in Washington DC. The first performances of his Mass on When Jesus Wept took place with King's Chapel Choir in Boston and of the art song A Little More Peace on the bicoastal tour of mezzo soprano Solmaaz Adeli. Helena (MT) Choral Week, Kerry Krebill, director, selected Chris as Composer-in-Residence, premiering Holy, Holy, Holy Is The Lord God of Hosts and giving a concert devoted to his music. The William & Mary University Choir, Musikanten and others have taken his choral music on tour.

During the Covid pandemic, Chris pivoted to the pipe organ the perfect social-distance instrument. Since then Lorenz has published several of his pieces, including a collection on chant-inspired hymns, Thee We Adore. His setting of Amazing Grace won a place in the 2023 competition and publication of England’s Beauty In Sound, with another Lorenz book of American folk hymn settings in preparation. Another recent focus has been lighter settings of Christmas carols for chamber orchestra, with a suite performed in holiday concerts and recorded for Navona’s 2024 “Dashing” Vol. 5 album.

Chris grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he studied with conductor/organist/composer Donald Hinkle. As a young singer and accompanist he was influenced learning great contemporary works under directors in Pennsylvania, New York and Washington. He has been a fellow in Alice Parker's composer seminar and attended workshops with Jean Berger, Daniel Moe and Craig Jessop. Chris's formal education and career were in international aﬀairs before retiring from the U.S. Foreign Service after three decades. He is a member of American Composers Forum, American Choral Directors Association, American Guild of Organists, and ASCAP as both publisher and composer. hohmademusic.com

JERRY (Chiwei) HUI has written a wide variety of music that ranges from serious concert art music to humorous choral arrangements. His music has been performed in the United States, Germany, France, Scotland, Estonia, Indonesia, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong by community choirs, campus ensembles, and professional groups. Described by critics as “seriously fun”, and with “accomplished contrapuntal texture.”, his composition has won prizes including the Robert Helps Prize 2008, and received commission that was featured at the World Saxophone Congress.

As a conductor, Dr. Hui has founded and directed various community choirs, church choirs, chamber ensembles and orchestras. At home in both early and contemporary music, he has performed often as baritone and countertenor, actively premiering works by fellow composers. Performances by his ensembles have been featured on Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Choral Directors Association conference, and the Fringe Series of Madison Early Music Festival. He is currently the director of choral activities at University of Wisconsin-Stout, director of the Chippewa Valley Festival Choir, and artistic director of the Schola Cantorum of Eau Claire.

A native of Hong Kong, Jerry Hui received his DMA degree in music composition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Hui's principal composition teachers include David Crumb, Stephen Dembski, Robert Kyr, Joel Naumann and Laura Schwendinger. His conducting teachers are Beverly Taylor, Sharon Paul, and Bruce Gladstone. jerryhui.com

JADIE REEVES (she/they) is a Chicago-based composer and vocalist with a penchant for drama, vulnerability, and queerness in the concert space. Her writing explores a wide variety of themes, particularly ones rooted in identity, healing, and lived experience. Aesthetically, she seeks to bridge gaps between classical and contemporary audiences, either reframing familiar materials in nontraditional ways or experimenting with new sounds altogether. Recent and upcoming projects include commissions for the Young New Yorkers' Chorus (Competition for Young Composers; May 2025; New York City, NY), Constellation Men's Ensemble (NOVA New Music Series; June 2025; Chicago, IL), and the MSVMA 2025-2026 SSA State Honors Choir (Michigan Music Conference; January 2026; Grand Rapids, MI). Her work has been previously performed/read by numerous ensembles, including Roosevelt University’s Contemporary and Wind Ensembles; the Western Michigan University Chorale, Treble Chorus (Anima), Wind Symphony, Symphony Orchestra, and Russel Brown Brass Quintet; Splinter Reeds; between feathers; the Kalamazoo College Singers; the Indiana University All-Campus Choir; and the West Michigan Choral Lab (with whom Jadie was a founding board member), among others.

Currently pursuing a Master of Music in Composition at Roosevelt University, Jadie studies with Dr. Kyong Mee Choi and serves as her program's Graduate Assistant. For her thesis, she is developing a 30-minute song cycle for extended Pierrot ensemble (+ voice and electronics) featuring poems from Elsa Gidlow's On a Grey Thread (1923). She holds a Bachelor’s in Composition and Vocal Performance from Western Michigan University, where she received the designation of Presidential Scholar in Music (2024).

jdreevesmusic.com

CARLOS ZÁRATE is interested in the potential of other artistic expressions to inspire musical ideas, the use of self-similar processes to generate, organize, and grow material, and how the interplay of multiple simple algorithms can produce complex results and quasi-organic behaviors. He lives in Chicago, pursuing a PhD in Composition and Music Technology at Northwestern University, where he studies with Alex Mincek and Jay Alan Yim. He holds an MM in Interdisciplinary Digital Media Composition from Arizona State University, where he was a Fulbright Fellow under the guidance of Fernanda Aoki Navarro and Gabriel Bolaños. Carlos also earned a Bachelor’s degree in Composition and Music Theory from the Centro de Investigación y Estudios de la Música (CIEM). His music has been performed at festivals such as SPLICE Institute, Foro Internacional de Música Nueva “Manuel Enríquez,” Festival Visiones Sonoras, PRISMS Music Festival, and Impulse New Music Summer Festival. carlos-zarate.com

tenors

Chuck Chandler, Matthew Cummings, Jack Reeder, Ryan Townsend Strand

basses

Matthew

Brennan, Conor Broaders, Ian Prichard, Aaron Wardell

Constellation Men’s Ensemble is a Chicago-based vocal group dedicated to creating distinct performances in unique spaces, empowering the next generation of singers through educational engagement, and expanding the repertoire for low voice vocal music by commissioning new works from both emerging and established composers.

Since 2019, Constellation has partnered with other local nonprofits to raise awareness and funding for impactful organizations to the Chicagoland community through our Community Uplift program. Organizations to date include the Chicago Park District, Chicago House, Center On Halsted, Boys & Girls Club of Metropolitan Chicago, CASA Cook County, Fostering Dignity, the Alzheimer's Association of Illinois.

In 2016, CME founded our new music series NOVA “New Original Vocal Art ” NOVA seeks to capitalize on our mission of commissioning new works and expanding the repertoire for tenor/bass voices. In 2022, NOVA V premiered works dealing with the theme of humanhood including our largest commission to date, Robert Maggio’s Man Up/Man Down, exploring how masculine identity takes shape in our evolving world; how our personal histories of family, race, religion, education, status, exposure, geography, etc. affect the formation of our identities. Constellation’s debut album Man Up/Man Down was released in 2023 with Sono Luminus Records and is available wherever you listen to music.

CME has partnered with Music of the Baroque’s Strong Voices program to bring music and passion to students within Chicago Public Schools. Workshop performances focused on careers in music, the joy of community through singing, and the multitude of ways that music can remain a part of your life after high school Pre-COVID, they toured New England and Maine, working with over 2,000 middle and high school students through their passion of connecting with the next generation of singers.

CME is the 2019 winner of the American Prize in Choral Performance, professional division constellationensemble.org

2024-2025 SEASON SUPPORTERS

Anonymous • Anonymous • Anonymous • Anonymous

Adrian Alexander • Bonnie Barber • James Bell

Howard Bellerby • John Bierbusse

Annie Mitran & Matthew Brennan • Emma Bonanno

Ben Brunnette • Sara Broaders • Shirley Burkhart

Yuell Chandler • Amy Cleveland • Samuel Coker

Emily Costar • Tom Cummings & Mary Lang • Kyle Curry

Ed Frazier Davis • Louise Dimiceli-Mitran • Brian Dietz

Kristin Dugan • Josh Essex • Virginia Fienup

Charles Foster • Phil & Brenda Hockberger

Jeremiah Holt • Randi Leake • David & Sandy Lentz

Ryan Lichtig • Dorian McCall • Chelsea Lyons

Brandon Mensing • Laura Michelini • Quinn Middleman

Diane Monnich • Kathy Montague

Geoffrey Bleeker Mudd • Gabriel Mudd • Donald Nally

Lorenzo Parnell • Sarah Ponder • Brandon Press

Dennis & Diane Roberts • J Evan Ruwe • Mr. John Ryan

Erica Schuller • Michael & Lindsay Strand

P.J. & Ryan Strand-Prewit • Kathy Walton

Steven Wilson • Robert Wulff

We want to honor all our amazing donors. If you would like any changes made, please contact giving@constellationensemble.org to update your information.

Constellation Men’s Ensemble is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and donations are tax deductible as allowed by law.

To continue achieving our mission of distinct performances in unique spaces, please consider making a gift right from your seat or on your way home following the performance. Remember that your donations help support our 2025 Community Uplift Partner, Care For Friends, in their integral work with Chicagoans experiencing distress with housing, healthcare, and employment. Make your gift go even further and consider a monthly gift to CME!

We rely on the generosity of our community to achieve the level of creativ ity and musicianship you experienced tonight. Thank you for all that you do to support music in Chicago and beyond.